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MIT students develop liquid fuel for electric cars

A group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students may have come up with the perfect solution to our electric vehicle charging woes. Instead of relying on lithium or nickel, the new battery design stores its electrons in semi-solid flow cells. Charged particles are suspended in an electrolyte solution and pumped between compartments used for storing or releasing energy. The tech supposedly makes the batteries up to ten times more efficient than their traditional counterparts, and even more importantly, the new tech is cheaper to produce. Estimates say that the design could cut the size and expense of current batteries by as much as 50 percent.

That's all well and good, but the really cool part is that charging the cells is as simple as pumping the drained fluid out and pumping fresh charged fluid in. That means that getting on your way could take as little time as a standard gasoline fill-up, greatly reducing the inconvenience and range woes associated with modern EVs. An operational prototype is expected to be completed in the next 18 months or so.

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And this boys and girls is the car of the future. No hydrogen, no natural gas, no waiting six hours to charge your battery. Every gas station will eventually be converted into an "electrolyte station". What are we going to call it? The Lectro Station?;)

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Here's the future, folks! Instead of a quick-swap battery, you just quick-swap the fluid and the discharge goes into the 'gas' station to be recharged for the next guy who pulls up. With batteries half the size, that means you get twice the range from current size applications. A 200 mile range is perfect for electric cars, and now once we get these fill stations up around the country, range won't be an issue.
Bravo, MIT.

This is neat. Great solution to the biggest problem of electric cars. I'm skeptical though because there have been so many claims of improved batteries that are lighter cheaper and more efficient. Some of them by big name companies or colleges too.
The liquid refuel is great and unique and I love it. But we'll still need 200 miles+ per charge.

I hate to sound like Apple but, to me, this changes everything. It sounds like one of the two main hurdles from taking electric cars into the prime time, this and infrastructure to support it, has almost been solved. Hopefully now that it's out in the open, nobody (ahem, US government, OPEC, BP, Exxon Mobile) can jeopardize it.

Like other commenters, the red flag for me in reading this was the whole "pumping the drained fluid out" thing. Is it reusable? Disposable? Does it decompose?
Generally, this sounds pretty cool and considering it might raise efficiency AND lower cost while making electric cars easier to use, I'm game.